James Matthew Barrie

James Matthew Barrie, known as J. M. Barrie (Kirriemuir, May 9, 1860-London, June 19, 1937), was a Scottish novelist and playwright. His fame is due especially to the creation of the character Peter Pan, inspired in large part by in his friends the Llewelyn Davies children. When the children's parents died, Barrie took them in, although he did not legally adopt them.

He completed his primary and secondary education at Glasgow Academy and the University of Edinburgh. He practiced journalism in Nottingham and then in London. He wrote successful novels and plays that were dwarfed by his masterpiece Peter Pan and Wendy.

In 1913 George V awarded him a baronetcy, and in 1922 the Order of Merit "in recognition of his services to literature and the theater". Before his death he ceded the rights to the Peter Pan works to Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, which continues to benefit from them.

Childhood and youth

James Matthew Barrie was the ninth of ten children born to a working-class Scottish couple. His father David Barrie, a relatively prosperous handloom weaver, and mother Margaret Ogilvy, managed to provide their children with a good education. Alexander, the eldest of the brothers, had graduated with honors from the University of Aberdeen. David, the second son, displayed conditions that made his mother foresee even greater achievements. David died shortly before his fourteenth birthday from a fall while ice skating.

The effects that David's death produced on his mother were described at length by J. M. Barrie himself years later. In the novel biography Margaret Ogilvy: By Her Son, dedicated to her sister Jane Ann, she addresses in detail the feelings and emotions of the boy James, his strategies to improve the state of deep depression in which he his mother had fallen, and his attempts to offer himself as a kind of replacement for the dead young man. As the weeks passed, James and his mother strengthened their bond through the exchange of stories and tales, partly imaginary in the case of the child and referring to the past of the town and the family, in the case of Margaret.

Reading was another link between the two; Robinson Crusoe and The Pilgrim's Progress were some of the texts that accompanied that stage. Eventually, Margaret suggested that her son write down the stories she told him.

He attended Dumfries Academy for five years in his teens, between 1873 and 1878. He continued his education at the University of Edinburgh, where he contributed to the Edinburgh Evening Courant newspaper, until finishing his studies. in 1882.

Friendships and Marriage

Barrie moved in literary circles, befriending writers such as George Bernard Shaw, Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Hardy, and George Meredith, among many others. With Robert Louis Stevenson, who was in Samoa, he corresponded extensively but never met in person.

In 1894, he married English actress Mary Ansell. The marriage ended in divorce in 1909.

Literary career

James Matthew Barrie's early work was in journalism. At twenty-two he worked for a time for the Nottingham Journal , until moving to London, where he continued to write articles and articles for various newspapers. Simultaneously with his journalistic work, he wrote fiction and drama. Around 1892, when he already had six books published, he began to abandon his collaboration with the press.

James Matthew Barrie set his early novels in the fictional town of Thrums, modeled after the town of his birth Kirriemuir. His Thrums novels were successful. The series began with Auld Licht Idylls (1888), followed by A Window in Thrums (1889) and The little minister (1891), dramatized in 1897 and made into a film in 1913, 1922 and 1934.

His two novels with Tommy as the protagonist were also successful: Sentimental Tommy (1896) and Tommy and Grizel (1902). In his novel from the previous year, 1901, he makes the first appearance of Peter Pan in The Little White Bird ( El pajarito blanco , in its Spanish version).

Since 1890 he wrote plays: in 1891, Ibsen´s Ghost, a parody of Ghosts, by Henrik Ibsen. At the beginning of the XX century, his main plays were staged: Quality Street (1901), The Admirable Crichton (1902) and What Every Woman Knows (1908). His last play, The boy David (1936), dramatized the biblical story of King Saul and young David. Like the role of Peter Pan, played by Nina Boucicault, David's was played by a woman, Elisabeth Bergner.

Peter Pan was performed for the first time on December 27, 1904. This play popularized the name Wendy, which was not invented by Barrie as is commonly believed, since in earlier centuries it had been applied to boys, even used as a surname, and in the mid-XIX century to girls. It is possible that, in Barrie's case, the name came from Margaret Henley, a girl who died at five years and five months of age on February 11, 1894. Margaret had difficulty pronouncing the 'r' #39; and when calling Barrie Friendy, she would pronounce "Fwendy."

The play has been performed on many occasions and in different languages. Barrie turned it into a novel in 1911: Peter Pan and Wendy (Peter and Wendy), and it has been made into a film since 1924, both in versions with actors and in cartoons. It originated musical comedies and comic strips.

The Bloomsbury scenes show the social constraints of late-Victorian, middle-class domestic reality, in contrast to Neverland, a world where morality is ambivalent. George Bernard Shaw's description of the play as "ostensibly a children's holiday entertainment but really a play for grown-ups" suggests deep social allegories in Peter Pan. In 1929 he specified that the copyright of the work should go to the nation's leading children's hospital, Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. The current status of these copyrights is complex (see Peter Pan Copyright Situation).

Barrie, along with other playwrights, was involved in attempts in 1909 and 1911 to challenge Lord Chamberlain's censorship of London stage production.

The Llewelyn Davies Family

J.M. Barrie as Captain Garfio with Michael Llewelyn Davies as Peter Pan playing at Kensington Gardens.

The Llewelyn Davies family consisted of parents Arthur (1863-1907) and Sylvia (1866-1910), daughter of George du Maurier, sister of Gerald du Maurier, and aunt of future famous writers Angela du Maurier and Daphne du Maurier, and their five children: George (1893-1915), John or Jack (1894-1959), Peter (1897-1960), Michael (1900-1921), and Nicholas or Nico (1903-1980).

Barrie first came into contact with the family in 1897 or 1898 by meeting George and Jack with their nanny Mary Hodgson in London's Kensington Gardens, where she often went while walking her dog Porthos. He met Sylvia some time later, in a chance meeting over dinner. He became a close friend of the family and, when Arthur died in 1907, he took over the family financially. He had a very close relationship with Sylvia and was like a second father to the children. When Sylvia died of breast cancer in 1910, he became the children's custodian. In her will, Sylvia stated her wish that her children remain in the joint care of Barrie, her mother Emma du Maurier and her brother Guy de Maurier. In her will, Sylvia stipulated that Mary Hodgson should continue to be her nanny, assisted by her sister Jenny Hodgson. Barrie, who was on bad terms with Mary Hodgson, falsified or misinterpreted this part, taking the name Jenny for Jimmy, as the LLewellyn Davies family called him. In this way, apart from Jenny, he and the nanny took daily care of the children.

Years later, Barrie grieved the deaths of two of his protégés: George, who was killed in service in 1915 during World War I, and Michael, with whom he corresponded daily, who drowned at Oxford in 1921. When Barrie died, Peter Davies, already working as editor, wrote his book Morgue, including much family information and commentary on Barrie. At the age of 63 Peter committed suicide by jumping onto the tracks of the London Underground.

Barrie's relationship with the Llewellyn Davies children has raised serious suspicions about his pedophilia. This has been denied by most English biographers arguing that there is no evidence to support that claim. However, paragraphs of his novel The White Bird show him, according to the current definition of pedophilia, as a possible pedophile.

The Peter Pan statue

Peter Pan Statue at Kensington Gardens, London.

The Peter Pan statue located in Kensington Gardens was secretly installed at night (possibly because use of that area of the gardens was not permitted) for the May Day Festival of 1912. Barrie commissioned the work from the noted sculptor George Frampton, who was to be modeled after photos Barrie took of Michael LLewellyn Davis dressed as Peter Pan in 1906. Frampton decided to change the model, and Barrie was disappointed to see the finished work. The statue has seven copies distributed in different parts of the world.

Film Biographies

The BBC produced an award-winning 1978 Andrew Birkin mini-series, The Lost Boys (also titled J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys), starring Ian Holm as Barrie and Ann Bell as Sylvia.

Finding Neverland, with the Spanish title Descubriendo Nunca Jamás or Discovering Neverland is a 2004 film directed by Marc Forster. It starred Johnny Depp, as Barrie, and Kate Winslet, as Sylvia Llewelyn Davies. The film is an adaptation of the stage play The Man Who Was Peter Pan by Allan Knee.

Works

Novels

• Better Dead (1887)
• Auld Licht Idylls (1888)
• When a Man’s Single (1888)
• A Window in Thrums (1890)
• A Power Drugful and Other Stories (1893)
• My Lady Nicotine (1890)
• The Little Minister (1891)
• A Lady's Shoe (1893)
• Two of Them (1893)
• Life in a Country Manse (1894)
• Margaret Ogilvy (1896)
• Sentimental Tommy (1896)
• Jess (1898)
• Tommy and Grizel (1900)
• The Boy Castaways of Black Lake Island (1901)
• The Little Wihite Bird (1902)
• Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906)
• Peter Pan and Wendy (1911)
• Farewell, Miss Julie Logan (1931)

Theater

• Richard Savage (1891) (in collaboration with H. B. Marriott Watson)
• Ibsen's Ghost or Toole Up-to-Date (1891)
• Walker, London (1892)
• Jane Annie (oper free, in collaboration with Arthur Conan Doyle) (1894)
• The Little Minister (1897) (theatrical version of the novel)
• The Wedding Guest (1900)
• Quality Street (1901)
• The Admirable Crichton (1902)
• Little Mary (1903)
• Peter Pan and Wendy (1904)
• Alice Sit-by-the-Fire (1905)
• Pantaloon (1905)
• Josephine (1906)
• Punch (1906)
• What Every Woman Know (1908)
• The Twelve-Pound Look (1910)
• The Legend of Leonora (1914)
• Der Tag (The Tragic Man) (1914)
• Rosy Rapture (1915)
• The New Word (1915)
• Real Things of Last (1916)
• Shakespeare's Legacy (1916)
• A Kiss for Cinderella (1916)
• Dear Brutus (1917)
• Charwomen and the War or The Old Lady Shows her Medals (1917)
• The Reconstruction of the Crime (in collaboration with Edward Verrall Lucas, found in 2017)
• A Well Remembered Voice (1918)
• La Politesse (1918)
• Mary Rose (1920)
• The Twelve-Pound Look (1921)
• Shall We Join The Ladies (1921)
• The Boy David (1936)